Seeing Double--Researcher Makes Clone of Sheep

In an announcement which has left both the scientific and ethical communities aghast, a researcher working for a private company in Edinburgh, Scotland, has apparently created the first successful clone of an adult mammal--a ewe, genetically identical to a six-year-old adult sheep.

Although the details of his experiment will not be available for public scrutiny until Thursday, when the results will appear in the scientific journal Nature, Dr. Ian Wilmut seems confident with the results of his experiment.

Wilmut said Dolly, a seven-month-old ewe, was created by fusing a cell from an adult sheep with an egg from a different sheep. Because the DNA of the egg cell was removed, the DNA of the adult cell directed the subsequent growth and development of the egg.

The egg carrying the adult DNA was placed into a third sheep for gestation until Dolly, whose hereditary information is identical to the adult, was born.

The experiments, which were partially funded by PPL Therapeutics P.L.C., a commercial biotechnology company, have many potential applications, scientists say.

Wilmut says he envisioned the technology being used in medical research.

Several clinical applications are already being examined. Medically-useful proteins could be genetically engineered into clone DNA and then mass produced and purified from the sheeps' milk.

This approach may be cheaper and faster than current methods, which extract protein from masses of genetically engineered bacterial, yeast or mammalian cells. Individually, the cells produce minute quantities of the desirable proteins; an entire organism could undoubtedly produce much more, scientists say.

PPL retains the rights to the technique, which allows them to recover pharmacologically-significant proteins out of clones' milk. The company has applied for additional patents and retains the agricultural rights to the techniques.

Other options for the new technology readily present themselves.

One appealing possibility could be to clone herds of the best-tasting beef or the most succulent turkeys, scientists say. The danger would be that in the case of disease, identical animals would have the same vulnerabilities as one another, thus inviting epidemics of massive proportion.

Another potential use for the technology, which scientists have been quick to dismiss, is using the technique to enable humans to clone themselves.

Though sterile bottles harboring mass-produced baby boys and girls are not yet rolling gently along conveyor belts, as suggested in Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World, the thought that this could be a real possibility has ethicists, religious leaders and concerned citizens voicing their alarm over the new technology.

"There should be laws against this kind of research. We're not ready for this at all," says Arthur J. Dyck, who holds a dual appointment at the School of Public Health and the Divinity School as the acting Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics.

Dyck says cloning humans is equivalent to opening Pandora's box.

"All kinds of mischief is in the making," he says. "The more our knowledge increases, the worse it gets."

Dyck says the abuse of the technique leads to dangerous areas, mentioning the possibility of using clones to form national armies.

"This could be seen as a kind of biological warfare," Dyck says.

Imagining a basketball team composed of "five Wilt Chamberlains on the court with back-up Wilt Chamberlains on the bench," Dyck asks, "Who will get the rebounds?"

In addition, Dyck says problems will arise among companies--people would need to be patented for corporations to remain competitive.

He says one result could be a mad scramble as companies vied for the patent to replicate the best cow or athlete extant.

Although Wilmut received his doctorate from Darwin College at Cambridge, his contributions to cloning may give a whole new meaning to Darwin's famous phrase, "the survival of the fittest."